Richard Wright Biography

Richard William “Rick” Wright (born July 28, 1943 in Hatch End, London) is a self-taught pianist and keyboardist best known for his long career with Pink Floyd. Though not as prolific a songwriter as his bandmates Syd Barrett, Roger Waters and David Gilmour, he did write significant parts of the music for classic albums like Meddle, Dark Side of the Moon and Wish You Were Here, as well as for Pink Floyd’s most recent studio album The Division Bell. Wright’s richly textured keyboard layers have been a vital ingredient and a distinctive characteristic of Pink Floyd’s sound. In addition, Wright frequently sang background and occasionally lead vocals onstage and in the studio with Pink Floyd (most notably on the songs “Time”, “Echoes”, and on the Syd Barrett composition “Astronomy Domine”).

Wright was educated at the Haberdashers’ Aske’s School and the Regent Street Polytechnic College of Architecture, where he met fellow band members Roger Waters and Nick Mason. He was a founding member of The Pink Floyd Sound (as they were then called) in 1965, and also participated in its previous incarnations, Sigma 6 and The (Screaming) Abdabs.

In the early days of Pink Floyd, Wright was seen as a dominant musical force in the group (though not as much of one as Syd Barrett, the band’s chief songwriter and front man at the time) and he wrote and sang several songs of his own during 1967ā€“68. While not credited as a singer on The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, he sung lead on Barrett-penned songs like “Astronomy Domine” and “Matilda Mother,” as well as notable harmonies on “Scarecrow” and “Chapter 24.” Examples of his early compositions include “Remember a Day”, “Paintbox” and “It Would Be So Nice”. As the sound and the goals of the band evolved, Wright became less interested in songwriting and focused primarily on contributing his distinctive style to extended instrumental compositions such as “Interstellar Overdrive”, “A Saucerful of Secrets”, “Careful with That Axe, Eugene”, “One Of These Days” and to musical themes for film scores (More, Zabriskie Point and Obscured by Clouds). He also made essential contributions to Pink Floyd’s long, epic compositions such as “Atom Heart Mother”, “Echoes” and “Shine On You Crazy Diamond”. His most commercially popular compositions are “The Great Gig in the Sky” and “Us and Them” from 1973′s The Dark Side of the Moon. He also contributed significantly to other mid-period Floyd classics like “Breathe” and “Time”.

Wright recorded his first solo project, Wet Dream, and released it in September 1978 with little fanfare. However, the album is regarded with some acclaim among Pink Floyd fans. Battling both personal problems and an increasingly rocky relationship with Roger Waters, he was forced to resign from Pink Floyd during The Wall sessions by Roger Waters, who threatened to pull the plug on the album’s tapes if Wright did not leave the band. However, he was retained as a salaried session musician during the subsequent live concerts to promote that album in 1980 and 1981. Ironically, Wright became the only member of Pink Floyd to profit from those hugely spectacular shows, since the net financial loss had to be borne by the three remaining “full-time” members. He was the only member of the band not to attend the 1982 premiĆØre of the film version of The Wall. In 1983, Pink Floyd released the only album on which Wright does not appear with The Final Cut.

During 1984, Wright formed a new musical duo with Dave Harris (from the band Fashion) called Zee. They signed a record deal with Atlantic Records and released only one album, Identity, which was a commercial and critical flop. Wright rejoined Pink Floyd following Waters’ departure. Because of legal and contractual issues from his “hired gun” status during The Wall world tour, Wright’s photo was not included in the 1987 album A Momentary Lapse of Reason and his name was listed in smaller letters than Mason and Gilmour. By the time of the Momentary Lapse world tour and the 1988 live album The Delicate Sound of Thunder, Wright was contractually a member of Pink Floyd once again. In 1994, he co-wrote five songs and sang lead vocals on one song (“Wearing the Inside Out”) for the next Pink Floyd album, The Division Bell. This recording provided material for the double live album and video release P*U*L*S*E in 1995. Wright, like Nick Mason, has performed on every Pink Floyd tour.

On July 2, 2005, Wright, Gilmour, Mason were joined by Waters on stage for the first time since the Wall concerts for a short set at the Live 8 concert in London. Wright underwent eye surgery for cataracts in November 2005, preventing him from attending Pink Floyd’s induction into the UK Music Hall of Fame. Roger Waters, who was also unable to attend the band’s induction due to rehearsals for the opening of his opera Ć‡a Ira in Rome, appeared in video link and stated, tongue-in-cheek:

Rick actually hasn’t had an eye operation, he and I have eloped to Rome and we’re living happily in a small apartment off the Via Venuti!

Wright contributed keyboards and background vocals to David Gilmour’s most recent solo album, On an Island, and performed with Gilmour’s touring band for over two dozen shows in Europe and North America in 2006 . On stage with Gilmour he performed piano, electric piano and synth leads with his Kurzweil K2600 workstation, Hammond organ and even his long-inactive Farfisa organ, which was resurrected especially for performing “Echoes” and a couple of Pink Floyd’s and Syd Barrett’s older numbers that Gilmour chose to revisit in his recent concerts. He also provided backing vocals and lead vocals (notably on “Echoes”, “Time”, “Comfortably Numb”, “Wearing the Inside Out” “Astronomy Domine” and “Arnold Layne” – the latter released as a live single). He declined an offer to join Roger Waters and Nick Mason on Waters’ The Dark Side of the Moon Live tour in order to spend more time working on an upcoming solo project (which may be an instrumental album released in 2008).

On July 4, 2006, Wright joined Gilmour and Mason for the official screening of the PULSE DVD. Inevitably, Live 8 surfaced as a subject in an interview. When asked about performing again, Wright replied he would be happy on stage anywhere. He explained that his plan is to “meander” along and said about playing live:

…and whenever Dave wants me to play with him, I’m really happy to play with him. And [to Gilmour] you’ll play with me, right?

However, Wright has stated that he has no desire to perform as part of an officially-reformed ‘Pink Floyd’ again, stating that the Live 8 concert was nice as a “one off.”

Nevertheless, in a recent documentary on the band aired by the BBC, Wright mentioned that he would love to tour the band’s music again.

Wright has the lowest profile of any member of a band known for their lack of individual attention seeking. Unlike the three other surviving band members who have emerged as public figures, Wright rarely speaks in public. Oddly enough, Wright was very rarely seen in the live footage from the Live 8 reunion performance, with a few exceptions he was only shown in wide shots. Some have suggested that the director of the broadcast did not know which musician was the fourth member of Pink Floyd until the very end when they got together for a group shot.

Wright has been married to his third wife Millie (to whom he dedicated his second solo album Broken China) since 1996 and they have one child named Ben. He married his first wife Juliette Gale in 1964 and they divorced in 1982 after two children. He married his second wife Franka in 1984 and they divorced in 1994.

Wright has a daughter Gala, who in 1996 married Guy Pratt, a session musician who has played bass for Pink Floyd since Roger Waters’ exit.

Wright’s style fuses jazz and neoclassical influences that complemented the simple harmonic structures of the more blues and folk-based songs written by Roger Waters and David Gilmour. As a keyboardist, he is more interested in complementing each piece with organ or synthesizer layers and tasteful piano or electric piano passages. Unlike his contemporaries Rick Wakeman, Tony Banks or Keith Emerson, only occasionally did he opt for solo playing, notably in “Atom Heart Mother”, “Echoes”, “Any Colour You Like”, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” Parts 1-5 and 6-9, “Welcome to the Machine”, “Dogs”, “Run Like Hell” and “Keep Talking”. Another notable solo is the first solo in Syd Barrett’s song “Love Song”. Wright is known for his ghostly atmospheric textures such as the Leslie piano arpeggios at the beginning of “Echoes”, the echoed Farfisa Organ in the live versions of “Careful with That Axe, Eugene” and “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun”, the distinctive Minimoog solos in “Any Colour You Like” and, more famously, “Shine On You Crazy Diamond” and the jazzy electric piano passages in “Money”, “Time” and “Sheep”. In “A Saucerful of Secrets” and “Sysyphus” he experimented with ‘treated piano’. “Sysyphus” also made extensive use of Mellotron sounds, something of a rarity in the Pink Floyd canon. Wright also used Indian modal scales in “Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun” and “Matilda Mother”. Although he is not often mentioned among the ‘synthesizer greats’, it is widely acknowledged that Wright’s inventive use of keyboards and synthesizers with Pink Floyd has been pioneering.

In the early days of the band, Wright dabbled with brass before settling on the Farfisa organ as his main instrument onstage (in addition to piano and Hammond Organ in the studio). For a brief period in 1969, Wright played vibraphone on several of the band’s songs and in some live shows, and he even played trombone on “Biding My Time” (also dating from this experimental period). During the formative years of Pink Floyd with Syd Barrett, Wright relied heavily on his Farfisa organ, fed through a platter echo device called Binson Echorec to achieve distinctive sounds that helped the band gain their “psychedelic rock” edge. He started using a Hammond organ regularly onstage thereafter, and a grand piano later became part of his usual live concert setup when “Echoes” was added to Pink Floyd’s regular set-list. For tours in the 1970s centering around The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals and The Wall, the Farfisa was dropped (although it was brought back when Wright toured with David Gilmour on his On An Island tour), and an array of other instruments were added to the lineup, such as: Fender Rhodes, Wurlitzer and Hohner electric pianos, VCS 3, Minimoog, ARP String Ensemble and Prophet 5 synthesizers. Since 1987 Wright has favoured Kurzweil digital synthesizers for reproducing his analogue synthesizer sounds, even though he still uses his favourite Hammond C-3 organ, although the one that he used with Pink Floyd at Live 8 and with David Gilmour is a “chopped” version (being stripped down of unnecessary weight and put into a more compact casing).

12 comments on the “Richard Wright Biography” page

Where would my life be without Richard Wright and Pink Floyd. It’s 6:00 am Sunday, the 12th. of February. I’m preparing at 56 years old to go practice my chords on my piano. Maybe some double arpeggios. Thanks for the inspiration Richard! God bless.

I am forever grateful for Richard’s life, his founding force with Floyd. His music and innovation has been an affirmation to me every time I listen. My first Dark Side was an eight track. Rock on, Ric, forever in peace.

I literally ‘grew up’ with Pink Floyd (I was born in 1954 and started playing in my first band in 1972/3), and the sound they produced was (a) instantly recognisable, (b)years ahead of its time, and (c) remains so. Those are the hallmarks of great musicians and artists generally. Rick was an absolutely central part of all of that and, four decades later, I remain in awe.

I am 41 now, I lived most of my life away from England, Pink Floyd kept me alive through the most grim periods of my life. I am a Muslim and I mention this to say that I found floyd to be the most popular rock band even in the most remote locations of the earth.

ahhhh, the Pink Floyd…my oldest child is now 37 years old…when i was a younger man and dating his mother we where at a friends house and we smoked some pot got high and excused ourselves to the nearby bedroom…..we turned on the turntable put on the new release Dark side of the moon album and had a very memorable time…9 months later our son was born and to this day he also loves pink Floyd and we often speak of the band and the members…i belive the band will live on forever! I can only hope so